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Ain’t She Sweet
By DementedPixie
Christmas 1930, Brooklyn.
“Don't you dare wake him.”
Bucky moved into the room where Sarah Rogers had placed the folding cot that Bucky himself used when he slept over. But now it was in the lounge area of the little apartment, pride of place right in front of the warm stove.
“What happened?” he whispered.
Sarah gestured towards the sofa so that Bucky would follow to sit with her.
“He's so stubborn,” she quietly began, and when Bucky opened his mouth to comment she raised her hand to stop him. “I know that's hardly news. But I thought he at least had one brain cell left in his head. When the snow came down on Christmas Eve I was at work, and I just thought Steve would be home safe then I'd finish my shift and we'd spend Christmas here together. I'd already been to the store, we had everything we needed even a nice turkey from Staubitz, you know? So imagine how I felt when I was discussing a patient near the entrance to the emergency room only to see Steve being carried in by some huge dockhand.”
Bucky stared at her, stunned. “Who?”
Sarah shrugged. “Just a kind passer by. Steve had decided to come and meet me from work, see, to make sure I got home safe. He was okay in the fresh snow but there was ice on the corner of Bushwick and Grand and down he went.”
Bucky gazed across to where Steve was now sleeping, his right arm encased in a huge white plaster cast and supported by a pillow.
“Is it just his arm?”
Sarah shook her head. “He's pulled the muscles on his left side, grazed both knees, hit the floor with his face…”
“Well of course he did!”
“ …so he split his lip, chipped a tooth and has a few cuts on his nose.”
Bucky threw his head back in despair. “Oh no, not his nose!”
“I know. It's not like it needs much more help, does it,” she gave him a tired smile.
“And his arm?”
“Broken wrist. He had an x-ray then they pulled the bones back into place and he'll be in plaster for a few weeks.”
Bucky visibly paled. “Pulled the bones back into place?” he repeated, shakily.
Sarah patted him on the knee, reassuringly. “They gave him some chloroform, I don't think he remembers it.”
“I should've been here,” whispered Bucky.
Sarah gave him an exasperated look. “Sweetheart, it was Christmas! You and the family were all the way over in Shelbyville. How’s your aunt and uncle, by the way? Did you get a good dinner?”
Bucky gazed at Steve again. “Oh they're fine,” he replied, distracted, “we had goose”.
Truthfully Bucky found he couldn't remember the trip to Shelbyville, the excitement of staying away from home, the presents or the food. All Bucky knew was that he'd left Steve alone for four whole days and Steve had gotten hurt. And at that very moment Bucky made a vow to himself to never let that happen ever again.
******
“We had turkey,” said a small voice, as Steve opened his eyes to gaze across at Bucky.
“Steve!” Bucky rushed across to him and fell to his knees beside the cot.
“Hey Buck,” replied Steve with a somewhat watery grin.
“Well if you’ve got help then I’ll get on,” said Sarah, standing up and reaching for her apron. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Thanks, ma,” replied Steve, real gratitude in his voice, before turning his attention to his friend. “Help me get up?”
Bucky glanced to the bedroom doorway that Sarah had just gone through. “Sure, if you’re allowed?”
“It’s just my arm, my legs are fine.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Pass me my pants?”
Slowly Bucky helped his friend get decently dressed, doing up his suspender buttons and helping him on with his socks and shoes.
“You want the sweater your Ma knitted you?” Bucky gestured towards where it was neatly folded on a chair.
“No it’s too heavy on my arm.”
“But you need to keep warm, Stevie.”
“Well you find a way to make it work then ‘cos I can’t.”
Bucky picked up the large tan coloured garment and regarded it closely. Then after a moment of thought he pulled the right arm through inside out so it was tucked away neatly, guided Steve to put his left arm in then did up the buttons on the front, over Steve’s injured arm and cast.
“You mean like that?” he said, quite pleased with himself. “Guess I always was the bright one.”
“Thanks, Buck,” said Steve, bottom lip wobbling slightly as his eyes filled with tears.
“Hey! What’s this all about?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just so pleased to see you.”
“You’ve had your mom here looking after you.”
“But that’s just it,” sniffed Steve, taking the offered handkerchief and blowing his nose, noisily, into it. “Ma is so busy, she’s on twelve hour shifts and you know how grateful we are for that, the way things are right now. And I’ve just made things worse for her, I’ve been trying so hard not to ask for things. And now you’re here and suddenly I can wear my sweater again. Like magic.”
“Just call me Merlin,” smiled Bucky. “So what else haven’t you been asking for?”
Steve smiled for the first time in he didn’t know how many days. “How long have you got?”
******
Those first few days had been tough. Still shaking from the pain and shock of the initial fall, Steve then had to endure having his impacted right wrist bone manipulated back into place by two strong doctors in the very hospital where his mom worked. Between them they had heaved so hard on his shoulder and hand that he’d nearly slipped off the gurney, and when the very audible “click” finally came the nurse was in such a rush to add the plaster of Paris that she squashed his fingers a little too close together in the finished cast.
When he and Sarah had finally arrived home she’d set about cleaning his split lip and the grazes on his knees and face, only stopping when she realised that his complexion had gone the same colour as the cast. So she set up the little cot, added as many blankets as she could find and insisted he got some rest. Which would have been a lovely idea except there was no position that he could place his arm without it throbbing in pain. He’d tried resting it on the blanket, under the blanket, along his side and eventually on a pillow where he could just about relax even if he couldn’t move.
Until the accident happened Steve hadn't realised how strongly right handed he was, but with his dominant hand now incapacitated his left felt frustratingly clumsy. It had been a good few years since he’d needed his mother to help him dress but he now found pulling up his pants virtually impossible let alone putting on his socks. Sarah Rogers was one of the most hard-working people Steve had ever known and he felt terrible that he was adding to her load.
To have Bucky back was like having his very own angel sent from heaven. He arrived every morning after breakfast to help Steve get dressed, sometimes with a pot roast or meatloaf from Mrs Barnes which meant Sarah didn’t have to cook when she finished her shift. Bucky also provided entertainment, reading his Christmas gifted copy of Treasure Island out loud, or playing Pinochle with one hand behind his back to make things fair. Bucky even broke a little piece of the plaster cast so that Steve’s fingers had more movement, which meant he could write a little. Even if Bucky did tease him that his usually neat handwriting resembled that of a five year old.
Bucky knew he’d have to go back to school as soon as the Holidays were over but with Steve gaining in confidence every day the idea of leaving him alone didn’t feel as terrible as it once had.
“Hey,” said the boy himself, having just arrived for his usual daily attendance at the invalid’s bedside. “I brought you a gift.”
“You don’t have to keep bringing me things,” said Steve, sitting up expectantly despite his own words.
“You’ll like this one.” He held out a crumpled brown paper bag with what looked like a bottle in it.
“You got me whiskey?” asked Steve, his surprise clear. “I mean thanks and all and I know you’re older than me but I’m still only twelve…”
“It’s maple syrup, jerk.”
His other pocket produced a couple of plain bagels which he placed on plates before drizzling syrup over them.
“Here,” he said, placing Steve’s plate on the table.
Eating was one of the seemingly endless list of things that were decidedly more difficult to achieve one handed. Steve had long since given up eating anything that required the use of a utensil so he picked up the bagel with his left hand and tucked in with enthusiasm, completely uncaring of the amount of syrup he spilt.
Bucky stared at the ostentatiously wanton display as Steve licked syrup off every one of his left fingers in turn.
“What you looking at?” asked Steve, with all innocence.
“A mess,” replied Bucky, throwing a dishcloth with such accuracy that it hit Steve full in the face.
“Be careful, idiot, that took me ages!” Steve gestured to the sketchbook that was open on the table by his side.
“Oh!” Bucky began to rise to check it out but froze when Steve thrust out his hand in warning.
“No you don’t,” commanded Steve. “Nobody gets to see this.”
“Why? You always show me your drawings.”
“Because it’s with my left hand! It’s a disaster.”
“Then why do it, if it’s so bad? Just wait till you get your cast off?”
Steve shook his head. “No, it’s not about that. Art shouldn’t be about making something look like something else. It should be about expressing what’s in your heart, no matter what it ends up looking like. So it doesn’t matter how bad it is only that I tried.”
“Then why not show me?”
Steve sighed, knowing Bucky wouldn’t give up. “Fine, but I don’t want to hear what you think.” He reached forward to pick up the sketchbook and held it out to Bucky.
There was a long silence as Bucky studied the page.
Steve sighed again. “Told you so.”
He had drawn Bucky.
Bucky had been depicted wearing his favourite newsboy cap, strolling along a city street with his hands in his pockets and a cheeky smile playing on his lips. It was an imaginary sunny day because he was in shirt sleeves that he’d rolled above his elbows. And it was perfect.
Bucky stared at the image a while longer before looking up at Steve.
“How did you do this?” he asked, quietly.
“Well Ma got me new pencils for Christmas so I wanted to try them out…”
“No. I didn’t mean how, I meant how? This is better than anything you’ve ever shown me. And you did it with your left hand.”
Steve blinked his eyes a few times. “You think it’s good?”
Bucky nodded. “It’s the best.”
“I… just drew it. I don’t remember even focussing on it much. I knew it was going to be terrible so I just kinda switched off my brain and just let the pencil do the work.” He paused for a moment as Bucky held up the drawing for Steve to look at from across the room. “Oh that’s not bad,” he admitted, immediately blushing.
“You gonna let me keep this one, for a change?” asked Bucky.
And, for once, Steve did.
******
Christmas 2025, Brooklyn
Bucky Barnes liked maple syrup on just about everything.
His Court Appointed Counsellor Dr Raynor had explained many times that he was allowed to have good things now, a suggestion that initially he'd objected strongly to. But as time went by and he carefully forged a proper life for himself he began to experiment a little with these elusive good things.
And maple syrup was an easy one. It just went with everything. Breakfast was a no brainer and he regularly drowned his pancake bacon and eggs in the dark heady sweetness, pairing it with good black coffee for balance.
But it didn't stop there.
Mash potatoes were, Bucky declared, sinful when you added syrup. Fried chicken equally so. There was also no vegetable that couldn't be improved by a generous splosh of the dark stuff. Even omelettes didn’t escape a dowsing.
Bucky and Steve hadn’t exactly grown up in a world of plenty. They had been born towards the end of the First World War just before the roaring twenties, a prosperous time with skyscrapers being built and work for anyone who wanted it. But before either boy could become a teenager the stock market crash heralded the Great Depression. Factories closed, a third of New Yorkers were unemployed and those in jobs were forced to take wage cuts.
Steve still clearly remembered the day in 1930 when 35,000 protestors had marched on City Hall as part of International Unemployment Day.
Steve's mother was a nurse and thankfully had kept her job, while Bucky's father was in work but had a big family to feed. So when Steve’s mother had sadly died it made sense for them both to move in together, lessening the strain on Mrs Barnes’s purse. Not that she ever let them go hungry of course, with all left overs going their way. With her help they had managed to avoid the need to use the many soup kitchens in the City, although Bucky often joined Breadlines whenever he saw one because neither of them were exactly known for their baking skills and bread was hard to come by unless you baked your own.
The one thing that Bucky joked got New Yorkers through such austere times was maple syrup which, thankfully, had still been easy to come by.
These days of course the modern world was all about consumerism on a vast scale, something that both men still marvelled at whenever they went grocery shopping. And although they’d probably never quite lost the urge to “make do and mend” they did spoil themselves now more than at any other time in their lives.
Hence a pantry full of twenty different brands of maple syrup.
“Really, Buck? This is Christmas day breakfast? We can’t even afford a schmear?”
“You can’t have syrup with cream cheese, Steve. That’s disgusting.”
“I thought you had it on just about everything these days.”
“Even I draw the line at cream cheese.”
Steve gave him a fond smile. They both knew precisely why they were having plain bagels and syrup for Christmas breakfast, of course they did.
“You remember me making a hash of eating these one handed?”
Bucky moved on to his second bagel. “Do I. Still, at least you never had to put your arm in the dishwasher.”
“I wish I could have, I made such a God awful mess!” Steve took another bite and looked at Bucky as if assessing him. “Of course,” he mumbled, mouth still full, “you kept your good arm.”
Bucky raised his eyebrows. “I did what now?”
“I broke my dominant arm, you kept yours.”
“Are you seriously trying to compare me losing my arm for the rest of my life and having it surgically replaced with a metal hunk of junk with you breaking your teeny tiny wrist 95 years ago?”
There are a lot of people who still can’t tell when Bucky is joking or whether he’s being serious. Luckily Steve isn’t one of them. He immediately burst out laughing and reached across the kitchen counter to slap Bucky on the back. “You’re such a jerk!”
“Punk.”
Luckily they’d both finished their plates full of deliciousness because on cue both their cell phones started to ring almost at the same time. Steve rolled his eyes and reached to answer his and Bucky stepped into the lounge to do the same.
Because this was another thing that Bucky loved about their life in the modern world, they had friends now. He chatted to Yelena, wishing her a Merry Christmas and thanking her for the vodka she’d sent him, while listening with half an ear while Steve explained to Sam that because of the snow they’d decided to stay home this year.
Snow was not something either of them particularly enjoyed. No matter how pretty it looked in Central Park snow still reminded Bucky far too much of Siberian cryofreeze chambers, and Steve had never quite gotten over the feeling of freezing to death in the Valkyrie. So when the forecasters started to predict a white Christmas about a week before the holidays they got organised and bought in enough supplies to get them through in style.
Bucky at last finished his call to find Steve seated by the tree, fresh coffee already poured, and an expectant look on his face.
“Presents now?” he asked.
Bucky nodded, putting his phone away and immediately reaching for a large squishy package from under the tree and handing it to his friend.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, dropping his head slightly so that his hair covered his face, something he often subconsciously did whenever he felt the need to hide his emotions.
Steve tore into it like the big excited golden retriever he truly was.
“Hey! It’s the sweater my mom made!” He held up the beautifully crafted hand knitted sweater to look at it more carefully. “No wait, this will fit me now, not then. And once I grew out of it Mom unpicked it and made a scarf and hat instead.” He looked up at Bucky’s bashful expression. “You made this?”
“Yeah,” admitted Bucky, shyly. “I took up knitting to help “deal with my trauma”.” He made air quotes with his hands. “I’ve been making it during my sessions with the Doc, it helps me talk without thinking about what I’m talking about. Or something.”
“But it’s exactly like the one mom made me, same colour same design. This is amazing Buck!” Suddenly realising that Bucky was beginning to look as if he wanted a pit to open under his feet so he could vanish forever Steve decided to divert attention away from him and reached to pick up another parcel from under the tree. “Here, Buck. This is for you.”
Bucky took the gift and stared at it for a minute. He hadn’t received that many presents in his life so he always liked to savour them. Slowly, he untied the ribbon and then picked at the tape with his fingers, unwrapping the paper without ripping a single piece.
And there, mounted in an ebony frame with a wide border, was a drawing of him as a young man, carefree, wearing a newsboy’s cap and with his sleeves rolled up. He gaped at it in confusion as memories flooded his brain.
“I got some more personal effects back from the Smithsonian,” said Steve, softly. “This was in there.”
“You drew it left handed,” whispered Bucky, his voice full of wonder.
“Yeah, Buck. I did. And you said it was the best thing I’d ever done.”
Bucky blinked away threatening tears as the memory of that most perfect time warmed his heart. “I remember it. You. I remember all of it.”
“I’m glad,” replied Steve, smiling. “Although you’d think after all we’ve been through we’d be very different people by now.”
“Do you want us to be different?” asked Bucky, suddenly concerned about all the different ways that he had changed since 1930.
“Hell, no,” smiled Steve. And they both laughed.
After dinner they banked up the fire and settled down to watch the 1950s film adaptation of Treasure Island. And as the snow fell outside their window in light and airy flakes, edged in gold by way too many artificial street lights, these two men from a different time contentedly bridged the hundred year gap between their youth and their world now. Nothing is really new just like nothing is really forgotten. And while sometimes the choices you make can create the burden of regret, they can also become the very best of memories that will see you through just about anything. Because while they may indeed be seen as two men out of their time, at least they were still together.
And it was the best of times.